Poehler, Meyers, and Linney at the Peabody Awards

Brian Williams took extra pleasure in his duties as host of the 68th annual Peabody Awards yesterday, because he’s an especially big fan of The Onion, one of the award recipients. “It’s secretly one of my web destinations every day. In the middle of getting ready for nightly news, I look at the Onion website daily. It’s fantastic stuff,” Williams told us at a private pre-ceremony reception. He’s a bit embarrassed by his Onion addiction. “Sometimes in the privacy of your office, you almost look both ways to make sure there’s no one witnessing the fact that you’re reading this,” Williams admits. “But they fulfill a great role. And The Onion is like the nineteenth branch of government — I think there are eighteen others. I’m not sure; I didn’t go to a very good school,” he added. However, reading the satirical rag doesn’t make Williams want to slip fake stories onto the NBCNightly News. “I vicariously get it all out through them, because they do everything anyone in a newsroom has ever wished they could do to the news.”